More than a year after it announced the end of sugar at Wales, the government yesterday sent its first high-level team to the West Bank Demerara community and heard demands for severance pay from former estate workers at a stormy meeting.
Minister of Public Secu-rity Khemraj Ramjattan said that while the government has already paid some $339M in severance to some Wales workers, it would take an additional $375M to pay the remainder who have been protesting.
Minister of Agriculture, Noel Holder led the team of Cabinet Ministers, which also included Minis-ter of Public Telecommuni-cations Cathy Hughes and Minister of State Joseph Harmon, to the Wales Community Centre, where they engaged dozens of sugar workers.
For more than a year now, the workers had been calling for President David Granger and his ministers to visit the community and explain the reasons behind the end of sugar at Wales. After Holder made a short presentation on the current state of GuySuCo, which he said was on life support, and its future, the floor was opened to the workers.
While a number of questions were put to the panel of ministers, the main focus of the sugar workers was why they were not being given their severance payments, which they have been protesting over.
Based on figures provided by Holder at the meeting, 1,118 workers at Wales stood to be affected by the end of sugar there. Of this number, 389 had been made redundant and severance paid, while 54 were transferred to other estates. This left 675 workers who would remain employed with the estate in varying capacities, 374 of whom are expected to take up jobs at the Uitvlugt estate on the West Coast of Demerara. It is this latter category that has been protesting for severance.
One of the workers explained passionately that he was in the Wales Backdam when he received a call from one of his colleagues explaining to him that the estate was closing and they were invited to a meeting at the staff club. Upon attending the meeting, he said that two representatives from GuySuCo explained to them that they had three options: to accept severance, early pension or to move to Uitvlugt. “We agreed and the majority of us said we were going for the severance and … they called us back again to make our decision and to photocopy our ID cards right in this building and we made our decision again,” the man said.
“They denying we. They promise we, Mr Minister, right here in front this, they come here with a table and we bring we ID card and they take it and ask what we want. Severance or go to Uitvlugt and we choose severance,” the man exclaimed, while stating that the representatives from the sugar corporation had stated that they had the money to pay, however, only some of the workers have since been paid the severance.
‘Huge problems’
Responding to the workers, Ramjattan, who recently led a government team in talks with sugar stakeholders, explained that some of the information that he was hearing yesterday was new to him since he was of the opinion that those who would have opted to be on the severance list would have received their payments. He added that an investigation would be done into the workers’ claims.
“Those that got the severance payment at the appropriate time we had to pay $339M in severance payment. By the way, GuySuCo is literally bankrupt. The figure now for purposes for those who want it is going to be $375M more. This is also coming from the information that we are gathering,” he said, while stating that apart from the financial burden of paying the remaining workers from empty GuySuCo coffers, the survival of the Uitvlugt Estate would depend heavily on Wales workers moving over.
Many of the workers referenced the closure of the Diamond Estate on the East Bank of Demerara several years ago and the workers being paid their severance. Ramjattan noted that at the time GuySuCo had the money to pay the workers.
“The argument has always been made that the employer is not Wales Estate, its GuySuCo. A lot of people felt that we would’ve made decisions and just close down and do all kinds of things. You know that we called NAACIE, GAWU and the PPP and we’ve had a consultation. We are not going to close down everything but please understand that we have some huge problems with financing it and understand that if you are going to take monies out of let’s say from a line item, if we have to take $375M out of some other place, it might cause some huge problems,” Ramjattan emphasized, while stating that the fact that the government has given the sugar company some $32B in subventions in recent years shows its commitment to the workers and their families.
While the workers kept adverting to the precedent set at the Diamond Estate, the Public Security Minister pointed out that the two situations were completely different since GuySuCo is going to provide transportation from Wales to Uitvlugt for the workers. The workers, on the other hand, have argued that transportation to and from Uitvlugt will take extra time each day and will pose much inconvenience.
Ramjattan also said that the Agriculture Ministry’s lawyers have also put together a legal opinion indicating that severance is not applicable in this case since transportation is being provided.
However, the workers were steadfast and kept reiterating that the only thing they wanted was severance and not to be transferred and after an argument broke out between them and the ministers, a number of them stormed out of the meeting.
However, the room was still filled with sugar workers eagerly listening to the presentations and they continued to ask questions.
One of the workers, who has been transferred to Uitvlugt, explained that he has been forced to do odd jobs, such as “cleaning stairs and climbing coconut trees,” since the estate has no vacancies for him.
“We are not here to simply make things written in stone. We are going to take all of that and carry it to the relevant authorities and another bigger authority – Cabinet. So don’t feel that although I am arguing the case as to why it is and so on, it is necessarily written in stone,” Ramjattan said, while emphasising that paying the severance to the remaining persons would “bring the entire economy into some equation that is not going to be as we want it.”
